Dead Europe Page 19

  I retraced my steps. I saw young girls with heroin eyes, young men taunting each other, their jaws locked in amphetamine grimaces. There were old men soused on alcohol. I walked past the barbiturated bag lady hawking old radio parts and found myself back in Wenceslas Square. Prague had drugs. Prague was fucking off its face.

  I rang Colin.

  —Baby, I miss you.

  —You’ve got a fucking nerve.

  —Am I ringing too early?

  Colin exploded.

  —You fucking selfish cunt! You call me, drunk, God knows on what drugs, and then you scream abuse at me for not sounding happy to hear from you. Happy? I’m lonely, Isaac. It’s winter here and I want you back home. His voice cracked. When are you coming home, baby?

  I was quiet.

  —When are you coming home?

  —In two weeks. It’ll go soon, I promise, baby, I’ll be back very soon. We made up and said goodbye. I had no memory of ringing him the night before, of shouting at him. I was ashamed. I wondered what else I had forgotten.

  The apartment building in which Sal Mineo worked was tucked between two gothic blocks. The foyer smelt bad. I took the slow, chugging lift to the third floor. It too smelt of piss. The lift door opened out to a dark, narrow corridor and I searched to my left till I located a switch. I pushed on the button and the fluorescent lights began their flicker. I rang the bell to the apartment. A small window in the door opened and two stoned impatient blue eyes stared out at me.

  —Is Stephen D’Arrici here?

  An effete soprano voice answered me in a swift alien tongue.

  —Stephen D’Arrici, I repeated.

  A bolt screamed, the door opened.

  I was in a porn shop. The tiny room had shelves along its four walls. Naked youths stared down at me, their cocks pointing towards the centre of the room. Against the far wall the young man with the blue eyes was positioning himself back behind a desk. I smiled but he did not respond. I turned and perused the DVD slicks. One of the racks of shelves shook, tilted, then thrust forward and out came Sal Mineo. His t-shirt was soaked through under his armpits and across his back. He waved me through.

  The studio was low and not very wide but it was a much longer room than the shopfront. The walls were covered with dark green plastic, and the room was sweltering. Two redhead lights glared down at us, the source of the heat. A blue mattress half-covered in a dirty pink sheet lay against one wall. On the mattress two youths were munching on McDonald’s burgers, nude except for matching blue Adidas shorts. A bearded man, fast swallowing fries, was standing beside a compact digital camera mounted onto a tripod, one hand grabbing at the chips, the other fiddling with the camera. A younger man, with a shaven head, leaned against a wall, a small microphone boom in his hand. He looked asleep. One of the boys on the mattress burped and the other giggled. The bearded man turned to Sal Mineo.

  —We’ll be finished within the hour. Do you want me to keep the lights up? His accent, muffled by the chips he was still chewing, sounded Scottish.

  Sal Mineo ignored him and instead guided me through the bodies and machinery to the far wall, and pulled back a strip of plastic. He waved his hand and I walked through.

  Milos was propped against a stepladder. He was naked and casually scratching at his shoulder. He smiled on seeing me and raised his right hand in a mock salute. Under the harsh glare of the lights he looked older, harder. Sal Mineo walked up to the tripod and gestured to me to sit in a corner. I sat cross-legged on the floor, wiped my sweaty face, and watched my friend work.

  Milos squeezed lubricant out of a tube and wiped the slippery gel across his genitals. His cock became fully erect. He nodded at Sal Mineo and my friend started taking photographs. Milos stood with his foot on the first rung of the ladder. Sal Mineo took a shot. Milos raised his arms and smiled into the camera. Sal Mineo’s camera went click click click: staccato gunfire. The flash fired continuously, Sal Mineo ejected the bulb and planted another on the camera. Milos bent over, a slash of thick dark hair ran along his bum crack. Flash flash flash. Sal Mineo adjusted the lens and shot. Milos started masturbating. The camera whirred into activity. At one point the boy stopped, grabbed a bottle off the floor, and sprayed water on his face and upper torso. His cock flipped up and down as he resumed his position. He looked ridiculous, plastic. There was nothing erotic in this room. I wanted to bash his mouth in. I was hungry for him but it didn’t feel like lust. It was more like the instinct of hunger. I wanted him annihilated. I was sweating, I was hard. I focused on the scene ahead of me. When the boy was close to coming he muttered a word in Czech. Sal Mineo unscrewed the camera from the tripod and moved closer to Milos. The boy’s ejaculate was thin, small quick sprays across his thigh, and Sal Mineo was done. Milos wiped himself with a ragged green towel, picked up his shorts and shirt from the floor and began to get dressed.

  I stubbed my cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and helped Sal Mineo pack away the lights. My throat was dry, tight. A rivulet of sweat ran down my back. When we had finished, the lights packed away in a corner, the camera slotted into its case, the stepladder filed against a wall, Sal Mineo sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. I sat beside him. He took a vial from his jeans pocket, and picked a porn magazine off the floor. Sal Mineo poured powder over the magazine cover. Milos fell to his knees beside us. We each snorted two lines of the cocaine and in a moment my lips went numb.

  —I shower, said Milos, rubbing his nose. When he was gone I looked over to Sal Mineo, who, still cross-legged, was staring at the floor. I touched his shoulder and he jerked away.

  —I’m fucked. He jumped to his feet.

  I sniffed hard and felt chemicals itch the back of my throat.

  —It’s good coke.

  —No shortage of that, Issey. Sal Mineo spoke rapidly. I lay back, looked up at the cracking ceiling, and listened.

  —This is just what I do for money, mate, alright? This is how I make a living. Every guy I shoot, every single one of them, I take other photographs. Not porn. Real photographs. I make them real and I make them beautiful. I still do my job, I’m still an artist, does that make sense?

  The room was unbearably hot, the sweat was dripping off me.

  —Let’s go somewhere.

  —There’s someone I want you to meet. My boss, Sal Mineo added ruefully. Come and meet King Kike. He laughed ferociously, a drug laugh. He pulled me to my feet.

  We stopped in the next room to watch the video being shot. The room now stank of junk food and chemicals. One of the boys had his face deep in the other’s crotch. The boy getting sucked lay back on the mattress, his eyes rolling back in his head. His dick remained limp. Sal Mineo laughed and the bearded man with the video camera turned around and scowled. He was chugging from a large bottle of Pepsi and the younger boy stopped performing oral sex to ask for a drink. The bearded man cursed in English, but paused the camera and handed the youth the bottle. The boy handed its back with a surly short retort in Czech. No one looked at us, no one asked who I was. As we left, the boys resumed pawing away at each other.

  We took the slow lift to the top floor. The lift doors opened directly onto a plush office with black leather couches on one side and a poster for All About Eve on the wall. A young Czech man in a shirt and tie sat behind a polished wood desk, staring listlessly into the computer. A Magritte reproduction of shrouded lovers kissing hung on the wall behind him. He raised his eyes for a fraction, then returned to contemplating the computer screen. Sal Mineo knocked on double French doors panelled in blue velvet.

  Behind a mahogany desk sat the fattest man I have ever seen. Behind him the city of Prague stretched to meet the smoggy opaque horizon. The airconditioning sang right into my brain. The man was suited, his hair shorn tight to the scalp. Flab folded over his shirt collar, and his pin eyes were set deep into blubbery cheeks. He munched on a cigar. The room was adorned with framed enlarged photographs of pretty boys with vacant, airbrushed smiles. The boys were framed amidst a green and ru
stic countryside. No turds floated in these rivers, no syringes.

  —Hi, Syd, this is my friend Isaac Raftis. He’s visiting from Australia.

  The fat man nodded a welcome and I notice the yarmulke sitting on his bald head.

  I stepped forward to shake his hand. His handshake was firm.

  —Isaac? You a Jew?

  —Goyim, I’m afraid.

  —Not your fault, he laughed. Then he turned abruptly to Sal Mineo.

  —How’d it go?

  —Good, answered my friend, that Milos is a good kid. No trouble at all.

  —He’s a fucking spoilt cunt. Syd contemplated the city below, then sat back at his desk.

  —Is he still whoring?

  —No.

  —You sure?

  Sal Mineo nodded. I stayed silent. I would have liked to grab the thick jowls of the man and shake him, slap him around: a movie star moment with me the tough guy protecting Milos, the whore with the heart of gold. But I didn’t. The man’s bulk, his throaty deep voice intimidated the shit out of me.

  Syd pointed to me.

  —Where do you know him from?

  —College. We studied together.

  —Is he any good?

  —He’s terrific.

  The fat man looked over at me.

  —You want a job?

  Sal Mineo half-turned towards me. His mouth was twisted in a hopeful grin.

  I thought of making money shooting beautiful boys fucking rather than serving behind a counter at a video store. Then I thought of the two boys with the smack eyes. I thought of Colin in our garden. I shook my head.

  —I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m just passing through.

  Sal Mineo’s eyes fell back to boredom.

  —Suit yourself, said the fat man. His phone rang, but he ignored it. Instead he pulled an envelope from his desk drawer and threw it across the desk to Sal Mineo.

  —Drinks. My place. Nine o’clock. Bring your friend.

  We were silent for ages. As soon as we hit the street, the sea of tourists, the lazy breeze, I felt the coke buzz intensify. The gnawing hunger had dissipated. It hadn’t gone away, I could feel it perched, ready, waiting deep inside my bowels, but the cocaine had muted its call. I was smiling as Sal Mineo took me along a roofless corridor. On a balcony, I saw an African woman hanging out sheets. At the end of a passageway we climbed some wooden steps which led into a small dark cavern. At the bar, moustached older men sat drinking beer and we walked all the way to the back where we sat at an empty booth. Supertramp was on the stereo again.

  Sal Mineo finally spoke.

  —Will this do?

  —Sure. Atmosphere, authentic Prague. Italian television played silently on the screen above the bar. I looked towards the men but they averted their eyes. Sal Mineo pulled the envelope out of his pocket and counted the American currency. I watched the men, their thick moustaches, their pulpy, beefy bodies. I wanted to erase the memory of the naked boys, to erase the fantasy of the bloodied Milos. I heard Sal Mineo say something in a foreign tongue and my reverie broke. A woman in her late forties, in a tight white sweater and a short denim skirt, was asking for our orders. Her hair was dyed blonde, her skin wrinkled from too many cigarettes and drinks. She made me feel surprisingly homesick.

  —What do want?

  —A pot. I mean a glass of beer.

  Sal Mineo gave our order.

  When the woman was gone, I leaned over and whispered, So you do speak Czech?

  —I can order a beer.

  We drank fast and had another round. Sal Mineo was chain-smoking. The Mediterranean boyishness that made sense of his nickname had gone. His skin was flushed, rough, older. I hesitated in taking a cigarette, saw my thick thighs stretching my jeans. Too much alcohol and sedentary travel this trip. I decided to take up swimming when I got home. To give up the cigarettes. To change my life.

  —How long are you going to do this?

  —What?

  —Work here.

  —You got a problem with it?

  I tried to put words to my feelings. He jumped in.

  —Look, Isaac. This isn’t Australia. I couldn’t even get fucking social security in Italy, let alone here. It’s been tough. I’ve begged, you know that? I’ve begged on the streets of Naples. King Kike pays me in American dollars so don’t fucking get moralistic on me.

  Stung by his words, I prissily chastised him for his racism. Sal Mineo roared his laughter.

  —You think that Syd gives a fuck being called a kike? You think that Syd is anything like those faggot Jew boys we knew back at college? Syd never went to fucking college. His old man’s still in jail for murdering a man. Syd’s probably done a few hits himself. You got a problem with that? You got a problem with Syd? Or is it you got a problem with me?

  I was about to answer that maybe it was Sal Mineo himself who had a problem with what he was doing. I was about to say, you’re drinking too much, you’re smoking too much, you’re fucking teenagers. I was about to say that we were approaching our middle age and that I was worried for our health. But I remembered his generosity to me, I remembered the calmness I felt when his head rested on my chest that morning.

  —I don’t have a problem with it.

  —Fuck off, of course you do. I’m taking sex photos of kids. You’ve got to have a problem with it.

  He looked around the bar.

  —I wish your dad could have seen all this. He’d reckon he had been proved right.

  —In what way?

  He pointed to the men at the bar.

  —They’re all unemployed and drunk and their kids and grandkids are making money by selling their fucking arses.

  Dad OD’d just after the Wall fell, just before the Soviet Union cracked apart.

  —Dad would just want to know how much you get paid.

  —What about you, Isaac?

  —What about me?

  —What the fuck are you doing? Why is Colin not with you? Why are you travelling with a bloody backpack at thirty-five? His questions were cruel, insistent. They came at me fast. And how’s your work? How much are you earning? Are you still working a grade up from a checkout chick?

  —I still work part-time, sure. That’s how I finance my photography.

  —How much are you selling for?

  I was ashamed. I was ashamed to be thirty-five and to not be making a decent living. Travelling with a fucking pack on my back.

  —Jesus, Sal, we never expected to make money out of our art, did we?

  Sal Mineo was staring hard at me.

  —So you’re still hoping to subvert the racist representations of colonial iconography?

  I laughed. But he wasn’t laughing. His next words were vicious.

  —Look around you, Isaac. Look where you are. Do you know what contempt these blokes have for you, with your headstart in capitalism and you’re still fucking mouthing off about silly ideas you learnt at college. Beauty and art and fucking politics. They’d sell their fucking children for a buck. And you want to talk about fucking aesthetics and ethics.

  He stopped. He took my hand and he slowly touched each of my fingers.

  —You’ve got a child’s hand, Isaac. Even the most hardened Aussie has these hands. You know that’s what they call Australians here? Children. Even Milos senses that, that you’re more innocent than anyone he’s ever met.

  He dropped my hand.

  —You’ll get a fuck tonight if you want it, they’ll all be hanging for you. You want to fuck Milos tonight?

  I lit a cigarette. The coke high was subsiding but I was back in Sal Mineo’s apartment looking down at his photographs. His real photography, the photos he is not paid to take. There is clarity.

  —Then why are you still taking your photographs, Sal? Why do you care to make them beautiful and real? What are you hoping to redeem? Their souls?

  In a dingy dark bar in Prague, Sal Mineo punched me. The men stopped their conversations, looked over, then their eyes darted away, as one of them moc
ked, puftah, and there was laughter.

  I wiped the tears from Sal Mineo’s cheeks. He gently took my chin and looked at my mouth.

  —It’s the same word, he said to me, the word for faggot in Czech and Aussie is the same.

  There was a puzzled wariness in his eyes.

  —What is it?

  —I split your lip, but there’s no blood.

  I pulled away from his touch. We finished our drinks and left.

  On the way to his apartment we went past a small shrine in which a picture of the Catholic Madonna sat atop a bunch of dried yellow flowers. A small bouquet had been kicked into the gutter.

  Sal Mineo stopped.

  —A gypsy girl was murdered here, murdered and raped. Her family keep putting the flowers there.

  There was black graffiti on the footpath, a rush of scrawled Czech.

  —And what’s that say?

  —That’s old. That’s from the Velvet Revolution. That’s history.

  Sal Mineo took a siesta but I couldn’t sleep. I snorted more coke, sat on the sill, and looked out on Prague. From these heavens, the city seemed tranquil and beautiful. I watched white pigeons circle the spires of the cathedral and settle on the tiled roofs. A billboard advertising washing machines—a young woman’s features frozen in ecstatic gratitude—and the darting cars on the narrow streets were the only evidence of the last century.

  From this height I had another hit of cocaine and sat myself on the bed with Sal Mineo’s photographs. There was no evidence of the lewd grins or faggy poses of Milos on the stepladder or the bored automation of the two boys fornicating on the mattress. Instead the boys and young men gazing out at me were diffident, gentle, hard, cold, laughing, arrogant, shy, brutal, tender, handsome, ugly, thin, yawning, fat, happy, sad; and every single one of them retained, at least under Sal Mineo’s scrutiny, the ease and confidence of youth. Every pore seemed visible on their skin. Scars, residue of snot in a nostril. A young man’s unshaven face, his growth not quite covering his soft cheeks.